Afro-Guyanese

Descendants of the Africans, the Afro-Guyanese came to see themselves
as the true people of British Guiana, with greater rights to land than
the indentured workers who had arrived after them. The fact that
planters made land available to East Indians in the late nineteenth
century when they had denied land to the Africans several decades
earlier reinforced Afro-Guyanese resentment toward other ethnic groups
in the colony. The AfroGuyanese people's perception of themselves as the
true Guyanese derived not only from their long history of residence, but
also from a sense of superiority based on their literacy, Christianity,
and British colonial values.

By the early twentieth century, the majority of the urban population
of the country was Afro-Guyanese. Many Afro-Guyanese living in villages
had migrated to the towns in search of work. Until the 1930s,
Afro-Guyanese, especially those of mixed African and European descent,
comprised the bulk of the nonwhite professional class. During the 1930s,
as the Indo-Guyanese began to enter the middle class in large numbers,
they began to compete with Afro-Guyanese for professional positions.